When it is known that the provost, bailies, counsellors, and deacons of the Athens,—seldom men of any education, and never men of any genius,—cum avisamento eorum ministrorum, (which, being interpreted, signifies “without benefit of clergy,”) have the sole power of electing the greater number of professors in the Athenian university,—when it is considered that the remaining ones are nominated by the crown, in other words, by the leading faction in Scotland for the time,—and when it is borne in mind that the said provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, are little else than a pair of bagpipes, upon which the said faction discourses whatsoever music it chooses,—it will become but too apparent, that the chances of having the professors’ chairs filled by the very fittest men possible are about as small as can well be estimated. That ignorant men should have the power of appointing professors of learning is in itself a very great absurdity; and that the ignorant men to whom such a power is delegated, should themselves be tacked to the tail of a political faction for the purpose of retaining places, contrary both to reason and their own abilities, makes the matter, theoretically considered, a great deal worse. I have no wish to accuse the civic archons of the Athens of wilful abuse in the exercise of this patronage; but I have seen them, I have heard them speak, and I have noticed the estimation in which they are held; and, by a very charitable induction from all these circumstances, I cannot help coming to the conclusion, that they are totally incapable, of their own knowledge, of determining who is, or who is not, a fit person for being porter to the Athenian college, far less professor of the humblest art or science held forth upon within its walls, not even excepting the professor of agriculture, or, as he is aptly termed, “the doctor of dunghills.”
Accordingly, though in times past, and not very long past, there have been found, in sundry chairs of the Athenian university, men who would have done honour to any college in any country, I looked for a continuation of men of the same talents and eminence; but though I looked for them, I found them not. The time has not long gone by, when the principal of that university was numbered, if not with the most learned and profound, at least with the most elegant of historians; but I should be glad to be informed of what person, or thing, or circumstance, the being that I found holding the supreme sway in the Athenian university, and in its metropolitan name, presenting himself before the King, as a specimen and representative of all the universities of Scotland, could write the history. It is true, that the office of this person is not much else than a sinecure, as he seldom comes before the public, except when his name stands rubric to a diploma; but, if an image is found with a wooden head, people are apt to turn away, without any very much examination of the limbs. It is said, more wittily than wisely perhaps, among the fledglings at the seats of science in the south, that “whatever may be the walls, the heads of houses are most commonly of lead;” and the saying might be carried to the Athens, if it were worth the trouble. I was told that, if at some former point of Athenian history, this personage had not been a bachelor, and the daughter of a quondam provost of the Athens a damsel to be wooed, the college of the Athens might have gone all unprincipaled for him; but the Athenians are so prone to drill holes in the glory of each other, that one never knows how much of their story to believe.
Still, if the nomination of the masters of Eton and Winchester, and the doctors of Isis and Cam, were deputed to the corporation of London, England would tremble for her learned fame; and yet no one can deny that the court of aldermen, notwithstanding the mental and corporeal obesity of which they are accused, are far more promising patrons for such purposes, than the town-council of the Athens. Their own election depends upon a greater number of persons, and before they can carry it, they must have some superiority over the freemen of their ward,—the means of flattering and bribing them, if nothing else; but, in the Athens, there is not the smallest test of talent previous to a man’s being chosen an elector of professors; and, therefore, no pledge that he either will or can exercise that function in a proper manner.
The “avisamentum eorum ministrorum” has no tendency to amend the matter; for the advice which these worthies are most likely to give, is, that themselves are the fittest of all possible professors,—a proposition, of which the theoretical doubts are great, and they are not lessened by experience.
The ministers of the Edinburgh kirks, appointed by the same persons as the professors, may be presumed to be appointed upon the same principles; and thus, though they were conjoined with the others, in the university nominations, it would be but an increase of the evil,—the addition of the political son to that of the political father; or, as Professor Leslie would express it, “a combination of direct and retroflected dulness.”
In consequence of these circumstances, the eorum ministrorum have usurped every professor’s chair in the Athenian college which can be by any sophistry twisted into a compatibility with the functions of a minister of the Kirk. After the very Reverend personage who, as aforesaid, groans under the load of the principality (not of Wales), the chairs, not only of divinity, church history, and Hebrew, but of logic and rhetoric, and the belles lettres, are in the hands of the Athenian priests. Now, though a parson in esse be the most likely person to teach divinity and church history, because those who are parsons in posse are the only persons that are likely to dip deeply into such studies; though, in a country where Jews do not thrive, it be a matter of no great moment who shall teach Hebrew, and though logic and rhetoric, as they are usually taught, be no weighty matters, yet there are substantial reasons why no officiating clergyman in the Athens should hold any chair whatever in the college.
In the first place, the Kirk of Scotland, at least according to her book of discipline, recognises no clergyman who does not perform the whole of his duties in his own person. She will have no “dumb dogs who cannot bark,” and if they bark to the extent that she points out, they will have no strength left even to hunt syllogisms in Bar-ba-ra, or to nozzle up Hebrew roots. The minister of the Kirk is, by its constitution, presumed not only to reside in his parish, and perform divine service every Sunday, but to devote the whole of the week, that is, as much of every day of it, as other men of a similar rank in life are supposed to devote to business, to visiting his people at their houses, and receiving their visits at his own, instructing and catechising the young, recommending the destitute to the charity of the Kirk Session, praying by the bed-side of the dying, and performing a number of other little offices of religion and charity, which are supposed to be imperiously binding upon him in virtue of his solemn vow of ordination. Ministers of the Kirk are furthermore not understood to purchase their annual stock of “Conciones Selectæ” in the booksellers’ shop, as is the case in some other places; and thus every spare hour from the parochial duties of the week is presumed to be taken up in preparing for the pulpit duties of the Sunday. Hence a minister of the Scottish Kirk, who is in the possession of a cure, cannot, in conscientious accordance with the oath that he takes when he is inducted, or with the practical duties which he ought to perform, accept of a professorship even of divinity or Hebrew. Either the church-living should be such as to occupy by its duties and reward by its emoluments, the whole of the incumbent’s time, or it should be so altered as to bring it to this state.
With regard to the professorships, again, it is extremely doubtful whether even such of them as divinity and church history can be profitably placed in the hands of the parsons; at any rate, one would very naturally think that the duties of a professor’s chair should be sufficiently arduous for occupying the whole of a mind as large as that which falls to the ordinary run of clerical persons; while, in the case of those of logic and rhetoric, the arts required in the Parliament-House, the grand theatre of logical wrangling and rhetorical display, not only in the Athens, but for all Scotland, the clumsy concatenation and leaden style which I heard, even in the Athenian pulpits, are strong presumptive evidence against the propriety of having them intrusted to clerical hands.
But it is not to those professorships alone that eorum ministrorum aspire. Not many years have gone by since the whole Athens was thrown into confusion, because one of the brethren was not permitted to squelch his carcass into the chair of mathematics, and become the successor of MacLaurin, and Stewart, and Playfair; and had he succeeded, the Athenians would perhaps ere now have had a clerical expounder of “Dirlton’s Doubts” in the chair of law, and a holder forth in the Tron Kirk wielding the anatomical scalpel during the week. The objections taken to the better-qualified candidate upon that occasion, were such as to throw considerable light upon the feeling of eorum ministrorum toward the university, and to enable one to form a pretty accurate guess at what will be its state if their unquenchable longing for it shall ever be fully satisfied. The exception which they took was a grave charge of infidelity, founded upon an allusion to David Hume, contained in a note to a purely philosophic book, and a book, too, which, both from its subject and its style, was never likely to get into general circulation, and would be read by nobody, merely on account of the note—the only part which was impugned as being contrary to the canons of orthodoxy.
It must be allowed that, if its patronage were at all in decent hands, the constitution of the Athenian university is not bad. The salaries of the professors are all so small that if the livings are worth the acceptance of men of talent, they must be chiefly made up of the small annual fees payable by the students. This is a very wholesome plan, and tends more to reward every one according to his real merits than that which obtains at most other places. The patronage, however, with the three elements of civil ignorance, political influence, and clerical intrigue, arranged against the single and undefined good of the institution, is more than enough to paralyze all the good which that principle, properly supported, or even let alone, would be capable of effecting.